then a heaven of desire.  But the weaving of the angels is the whole philosophy of nature.  Their music explains its sympathies and sorrows, its deaths and resurrections, and above all its solemn silences of night and noon.  And the song of their weaving becomes nature’s love of wisdom, that is to say, adoration of the Word.  The saints are the only complete philosophers.  The object of asceticism is generally misunderstood, particularly in one phase of its endeavors,—­to forget the body.  The truth of the matter is that the flesh and blood in their highest song toward which we should strive are so occupied with praising God that they completely lack self-consciousness, and do not distract the intellect or the will.  God is with them in naked purity.  It is His simplest and dearest starry music.  He demands that our life should be a programme of infinite proportions.  And yet I wonder if a saint can ever be both a great prophet and a great apostle.  I do not believe a great prophet can be tender enough to persuade.  That is why prophets are scorned or ignored by their generation.  Gentleness is the absolute breath of music, which alone can penetrate the soul or even the material body of nature.  The supreme gentleness of St. Francis of Assisi made the birds listen to his music, for his breath ran dancing in a cool breeze through all their singing stars.  We need a St. Francis at present burningly.  Is it possible to form a religious order of the poets?  Here is an ideal.  But it must be Franciscan:  a gown, a girdle, and sandals, poverty, chastity, and obedience.  Where is the wise man to obey?  I can believe that jewels are potent for good or evil, since they are condensed flame and a secret word lies hidden in each of their hearts.  A day of tempestuous wind and rain.

August 11.

Today I found myself progressing slowly to a triumphant rhythm round the circumference of a vast musical plane.  The celestial earth is flat but progresses upwards to its central point, the cone of aspiration and song.  And then I remembered the vision of St. Frances of Rome wherein she saw the Supreme Godhead as a vast Circle of Light in the midst of which was a Pillar, the Cone of Redemption and Silence.  Death is the point of meeting.  Perhaps the Zodiac is the merry-go-round of the stars.  A second day of tempest.  The great message of future poetry will be to proclaim that nature is the expression of man, rather than man of nature, and thus to reveal the essential nobility of man as the image of God rather than the image of nature.  Suns and winds and waters are what we make them.  Pantheism confuses the image of the image with the face.  Nature is the mirror of man as man is the mirror of God.  Nay more, nature is the mirror in time of man’s eternity, as man is the image in time and eternity of God.  It is for this reason that the stars are the open book of the future, though they are not to be read by men aloud.  Astrology is forbidden because it violates the precept of silence, which